"Selling out" ruins entertainment

Some people might say advertising is a "necessary evil."

I wholeheartedly agree. Advertising funds this newspaper, and I believe I can speak candidly, with a big cheesy smile, when I say The East Texan appreciates any and all advertisements. Advertising is quite necessary.

However, I agree much stronger in the "evil" part of that statement. Some advertising strategies are starting to get out of hand.

The problem I have is not with advertising on the commercial and local levels. Where I take issue is with movie stars and other celebrities using advertising practices to make a little extra cash on the side.

The major method I want to address is product placement: stop it. It is getting to the point of being annoyingly excessive.

It has not always been this way. The first time I saw Wayne's World I had quite the hankering for a bag of Doritos, some licorice and a Pepsi. But that was over ten years ago. Can we move past these tactics now?

Besides being indicative of greed, product placement in movies and television is subversive by its very nature. I consider myself to be at least somewhat observant and I rarely pick up on all of the products that appear in a movie. I might catch a few in any given film but certainly not all of them. When there is an exorbitant amount of brands in a movie, they become almost subliminal.

Take 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. During its 2.5 hour run-time, there are almost 50 brands featured or explicitly mentioned.

This may not seem like a big deal to most but when you do the math, this adds up to about one brand every three minutes. This amount of advertising would lead one to believe Revenge of the Fallen was in desperate need of revenue.

Right?

Wrong. Transformers 2, as it is commonly referred, was the second highest grossing movie in 2009 with a grand total of $402,111,870 – and that is before the revenue of any product placement is factored in.

Conclusion: greedy.

I would also like to speak for a moment about the evils of product endorsements by athletes and other celebrities. The most prominent example of this iniquity comes in the form of Peyton Manning.

Peyton Manning made roughly $23 million last year. Of that $23 million, Manning only earned about $14 million from doing his actual job – tossing around the old pigskin. Well in case there is any doubt, $14 million is a ridiculous amount of money to play an elaborate game of keep-away.

So where did the rest of that $23 million salary come from?

With eight major endorsement deals in 2009, including MasterCard, Kraft Oreo and Sony, Peyton Manning earned an extra $9 million on top of his already eight-figure salary.

Conclusion: selfish. I am not trying to say Peyton Manning is some cold-hearted monster because he tries to maximize his earning potential, but enough is enough.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on the sponsorship of "athletes" in certain "sports." The most recognized spawn of sponsorship in the media is NASCAR. Without sponsorship, the horrific "sport" of NASCAR would probably no longer exist. Need I say more?

Conclusion: evil.